Woke watch.

[Hoover Attack]

Being from the North Pole, I’d expect Mrs Claus has some Inuit in her.

[Dunners]

Two theories:

1. She is 100% Inuit, and Santa was in an interracial marriage after all.

2. Her and Santa are Anatolian colonisers who have enslaved the local Inuits and branded them as elves, and denying then union recognition

[Proposition Joe]

Adjoa Andoh also starred in Dr Who (as Martha Jones’s mother)

And is currently one of the main stars in the Bridgerton spin-off. To say she's been picked simply because she said something controversial about the royal fam - almost certainly a question asked because she is currently playing a member of a royal family - is pretty demeaning.

[CEB2ElectricBoogaloo]

I think you misunderstand.
It *is* demeaning, but it’s damning of the intentions and motivations of the creatives who know exactly who is on the radar of culture war stuff.
Adverts no longer get the attention they used to, so a big part of advertising is being able to be part of The Discourse.
After the Royal Family storm in a teacup, it’s absolutely the case that some people in advertising with an eye on culture war stuff thought “she’d be a good one to get in”

I mean, it’s not even in debate that advertising for brands actively engages in culture war stuff - what they actually do though is cynically try to target the sweet spot between “generate headlines through pissing off the gammons” and “completely crash their stock price”

[Dunners]

Wait! Are the lefties now defending the intentions of the conglomerate media agencies and their capitalist elite owners? I'm so f*cking confused.

[Max B Gold]

I think you misunderstand.
It *is* demeaning, but it’s damning of the intentions and motivations of the creatives who know exactly who is on the radar of culture war stuff.
Adverts no longer get the attention they used to, so a big part of advertising is being able to be part of The Discourse.
After the Royal Family storm in a teacup, it’s absolutely the case that some people in advertising with an eye on culture war stuff thought “she’d be a good one to get in”

I mean, it’s not even in debate that advertising for brands actively engages in culture war stuff - what they actually do though is cynically try to target the sweet spot between “generate headlines through pissing off the gammons” and “completely crash their stock price”

What about the disruptive element of the Boots advert when you cast your mind to Megan's role in Britain's No1 family. Maybe it's even more subversive than we think.

[Dunners]

You mean that Boots PLC could be the vanguard of the revolutionary republican movement?

[Hoover Attack]

I think you misunderstand.
It *is* demeaning, but it’s damning of the intentions and motivations of the creatives who know exactly who is on the radar of culture war stuff.
Adverts no longer get the attention they used to, so a big part of advertising is being able to be part of The Discourse.
After the Royal Family storm in a teacup, it’s absolutely the case that some people in advertising with an eye on culture war stuff thought “she’d be a good one to get in”

I mean, it’s not even in debate that advertising for brands actively engages in culture war stuff - what they actually do though is cynically try to target the sweet spot between “generate headlines through pissing off the gammons” and “completely crash their stock price”

But if this was the obvious reaction (I don’t know enough on the subject or the previous incident to say otherwise), wouldn’t the actor or her people have said best to swerve this work opportunity?

[Max B Gold]

You mean that Boots PLC could be the vanguard of the revolutionary republican movement?

If it sells. Then why not.

Who owns Boots plc?

[Adz]

I think you misunderstand.
It *is* demeaning, but it’s damning of the intentions and motivations of the creatives who know exactly who is on the radar of culture war stuff.
Adverts no longer get the attention they used to, so a big part of advertising is being able to be part of The Discourse.
After the Royal Family storm in a teacup, it’s absolutely the case that some people in advertising with an eye on culture war stuff thought “she’d be a good one to get in”

I mean, it’s not even in debate that advertising for brands actively engages in culture war stuff - what they actually do though is cynically try to target the sweet spot between “generate headlines through pissing off the gammons” and “completely crash their stock price”

I think you give people in marketing too much credit. The ones i've met have been vapid fools living within their own thought bubble.

[CEB2ElectricBoogaloo]

A vapid fool is exactly the type of person who would choose someone on the basis of being an easy headline in culture war discourse

[Long slender neck]

So is this woman just meant to never work or be seen in public again?

[Hoover Attack]

I’ve no doubt that the guys heading up these advertising firms are absolute arseholes, looking to get as much publicity from their campaigns as possible by whatever means necessary.

Maybe I’m naive but I just don’t see that this reaction was the one expected, or that Boots or the actress would have gone with it if they’d known.

[Proposition Joe]

So is this woman just meant to never work or be seen in public again?

No, no, of course she can still get jobs. But she just needs to know that, despite any talent or a decades long body of work, any future role she gets is down to a nefarious ad agency or casting producer trying to stoke the culture wars.

[CEB2ElectricBoogaloo]

“ Maybe I’m naive but I just don’t see that this reaction was the one expected, or that Boots or the actress would have gone with it if they’d known.”

I do think that that is genuine naivety then. Come on, Christmas stuff has always been a flashpoint in culture wars before culture war was even a thing. There’s a long history of “you can’t even call it Christmas” stuff, often based on nothing at all.

All I’m saying here is that the people charged with trying to get eyes on their content in an attention based economy know that controversy about Christmas does the trick, and in that context, the casting of an actress with a recent history of being caught up in a royal race row being cast as a black Mrs Clause is less a case of someone thinking “aah it’ll be good to do colour blind casting, I think as a society we’re at that point - and if we’re not, this ad will help!!” and more a case of someone thinking “this will get people talking, and put us on the right side of culture wars because only the racist gammons will take issue”

I’m not actually saying that inadvertantly pissing off the racists is a bad thing; just that this advert was almost certainly made in the knowledge it’d piss those people off, and so the reality is more “this is a culture war skirmish that was carefully designed as such from the start”

[CEB2ElectricBoogaloo]

And I 100% believe that *challenging* the racists is a good thing. But that’s why I think this ad - and the choice in casting - is so cynical.
If the advert was designed as a unifying nudge towards people accepting a black woman version of a female character, then you’d maybe avoid casting someone fresh in the memory of the racists as someone who done a reverse racism against our royal family, so the advert could and would stand on its merits, and the only objection from the racists would be the ridiculous “but Mrs Clause is white!”; by casting someone who had those recent headlines, they provide discourse fuel.

[Dunners]

Nah, the advertising agencies are notorious for being a bit naïve and not at all seeking to exploit public discourse and controversy in order to generate returns.

[CEB2ElectricBoogaloo]

“ But if this was the obvious reaction (I don’t know enough on the subject or the previous incident to say otherwise), wouldn’t the actor or her people have said best to swerve this work opportunity?”

Why would an actor not want the mixture of a big payday for a couple of day’s work plus the chance to be on the perceived “goodies side” of a culture war debate centred around Christmas?

[Hoover Attack]

“ Maybe I’m naive but I just don’t see that this reaction was the one expected, or that Boots or the actress would have gone with it if they’d known.”

I do think that that is genuine naivety then. Come on, Christmas stuff has always been a flashpoint in culture wars before culture war was even a thing. There’s a long history of “you can’t even call it Christmas” stuff, often based on nothing at all.

All I’m saying here is that the people charged with trying to get eyes on their content in an attention based economy know that controversy about Christmas does the trick, and in that context, the casting of an actress with a recent history of being caught up in a royal race row being cast as a black Mrs Clause is less a case of someone thinking “aah it’ll be good to do colour blind casting, I think as a society we’re at that point - and if we’re not, this ad will help!!” and more a case of someone thinking “this will get people talking, and put us on the right side of culture wars because only the racist gammons will take issue”

I’m not actually saying that inadvertantly pissing off the racists is a bad thing; just that this advert was almost certainly made in the knowledge it’d piss those people off, and so the reality is more “this is a culture war skirmish that was carefully designed as such from the start”

I can see the ad agency execs thinking that this would generate publicity. I don’t for one second think they wanted to do good or serve a cause.

I can’t see the Boots directors wanting this sort of negative publicity.

I can’t see the actress wanting this level of grief.

[CEB2ElectricBoogaloo]

I can see the ad agency execs thinking that this would generate publicity. I don’t for one second think they wanted to do good or serve a cause.

I can’t see the Boots directors wanting this sort of negative publicity.

I can’t see the actress wanting this level of grief.

Point one: agree

Point two: partly disagree - they absolutely want this level of publicity, it’s only clear (from their perspective) whether the publicity is negative or not once they see the impact on sales. They probably signed off on the concept/idea at some point along the line based on the idea that the creatives would generate talking points around the brand

Point three: why? She has already waded into culture war nonsense quite happily, and being in another (on which she is positioned as on the progressive side) is not going to have any negative impact whatsoever on her career prospects. There’s no downside apart from having to tune out the social media noise.

[Hoover Attack]

Can we do the John Lewis one next?

[Proposition Joe]

I hear they identify as Jane Lewis this year.

[Proposition Joe]

Not sure if this needs it's own thread, but can't help but feel Bentancur's 7 match ban is on the excessive side. Is a ban of that length 'woke' or just a sign that anything other than incredibly harsh repercussions will be taken as evidence that bodies like the FA aren't 'taking racism seriously'?

[Celtient]

I agree with him that was a very bad joke though

[Proposition Joe]

This is also true.